


out of shamelessness something beautiful

by zempasuchil



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-31
Updated: 2009-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zempasuchil/pseuds/zempasuchil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Adam at the beginning and end; Lucy and War in the Golden Age; Edmund and Pollution in spring; Susan and Famine in England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of shamelessness something beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aqua_eyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqua_eyes/gifts).



> for aqua eyes, who requested Narnia/Good Omens crossover.  
> poetry at the beginning of the Susan and Famine drabble and title are from Carl Phillips's poem "Civilizations".

**Peter and Adam**

The ocean waves have submerged the beach and are pounding at the face of the cliffs, the very ones below them on which Cair Paravel rests. Peter can hardly see for rain and the wind whipping his hair into his face, but the young blonde boy seems calm, almost pleased. The clouds are dark as slate above, and on the horizon is a wrong greenish glow.

"You're not even wet," Peter shouts above the gale. Adam smirks, hands in his pockets. "Look, I don't know what you think you're doing but I'm High King of Narnia and I won't stand for it."

Adam rolls his eyes and turns to face the sea, the picture of nonchalance. "What're you going to do, call your lion up and have him maul me?"

Peter frowns. "I'll do it myself." Adam hears the ring of his sword unsheathing and turns to face the young, young king.

"No, you won't," he says, and the wind picks up.

Peter stops in his tracks and in the level gaze of this strange boy he sees the very eye of this otherworldly storm. It seems to him that there is fire and reckoning there. "Aslan didn't send you, did he?"  
_

Father Time stands in the red glow, and Peter squints to see his face. Eustace and Jill are saying something about seeing the same old man once, below the surface of the earth, waiting for this moment they supposed. But this man doesn't look old to Peter, though the hood shadows his features.

As all these things have passed, the men and beasts standing before the stable have been caught in time or out of time, in a strange blur like phantoms; it's uncertain as to whether they're there or not. Peter sees one clearly, though, laughing in the changing light of the simultaneous sun and moon, and he is not dark like a Calormene but blonde and boyish, fey and dangerous.

The sun glows huge and red now and the moon is swallowed. He thinks he sees the boy, the young man, turn to wink at him – and the sun is quenched, like a giant eye shutting with a flare of infernal heat.

It is utter darkness; it is the end of all things. Peter closes the door on it, and turns the golden key in the lock.

 

=

 

**Lucy and War**

The night before battle Queen Lucy was walking back to her tent after meeting with the High King, King Edmund, Queen Susan, Spymaster Tumnus, and the commanding general to discuss strategy. Tactics could not hold her mind for long, even though she knew how important they were. She could hold the image and plan of an army's movement in her head, could picture the mountains rolling up before her, the line of the forest, the low and high points of terrain; she could remember the locations of all the troops. Compared to the smell of blood and earth and northern firs, though, the maps and plans they drew out were empty and dry and conveyed nothing.

A human figure slipped out from behind a tree, in leather armour that made no sound, and fell into step with Lucy. Her red hair hung long and loose down her back, and she carried her helm in her hand. Lucy thought she recognized her from the regiments earlier in the day, when Peter spoke to the troops. She hadn't seemed so tall, though, or hard-eyed.

"No heart for the horror of war, Queen Healer?"

Lucy thought this was rather forward, but answered, "Nay, I merely have no mind for maps. Have no doubt, I will fight with my royal brothers and sister on the morrow. Strategy is not where I find my work, and I am not only a healer. A Queen has her duty."

"Only a duty, is it? Why go to war, then?" If Lucy thought ill of the soldiers, she might think this woman was being flippant. "You are the Valiant, unless all Narnia is mistaken."

Lucy stopped and turned, fierce. "Never. I will die for Narnia and I will kill for Narnia, I swear by Aslan's very mane. If you have any doubt, only look to the front left flank tomorrow. Know that I will spill blood."

War faced her, baring her teeth in a mirthless grin. "I will be at your right hand, Queen Lucy."

 

=

 

**Edmund and Pollution**

Edmund would like to think he never lets sin touch him but in the winter it is hardest, in the winter he shows a brave face every day he can. He will have snowball fights with Peter, sled down the hills with Susan, make snow angels with Lucy, but for himself he will wander out in the woods alone, remembering the bells of a sledge. At night, he stares out his window on the dark and cold hills and longs for a piece of Turkish Delight, castigating himself for every moment and repeating to himself the words Aslan spoke to him that morning.

As the spring thaw begins, the grassy spots of ground emerging look to him like a creeping malaise on the earth, a taint upon the snow. The slush on the roads dirties, and his mind becomes mired in it, when his siblings can see the clear waters returning from the mountains.

On a morning where the mud has frozen the night before and is just now thawing in the oddly bright sun, he sees the young man for the first time. He's a little green around the edges, but it looks almost natural where he sits, on a rock with a churned pit of mud by his feet by the pale green of buds on the trees.

"What a mess this is," Edmund remarks, and the young man nods, playing with something in his hands as he looks towards the rushing swelling river.

"I know," he says, a little melancholy, and though his voice is soft it gives Edmund a start, for it reminds him of something he had expected never to hear again. "Everything is washing away already."

The King shudders.

The next day Edmund plants bulbs as an act of faith, up to his elbows in mud and sweat on his brow from the digging. There is already less slush than the day before.

 

On the first day of frost, he sees the youth again, lingering near a pile of spoiled fruit with a thin well-dressed man. The man looks at the browned, diseased things with distaste, but his sickly counterpart picks up an apple that is half brown mush and examines it, almost scientifically, an odd pleased look on his face. Edmund does not realize he is staring until the youth meets his gaze directly, smiles, and holds out the rotten fruit to the king as though it were tribute.

"The closer to winter, the sweeter they taste," he says.

This time, Edmund can walk away.

 

=

 

**Susan and Famine**

 

_As he said to me_

once, That's all garbage  
down the river, now. Turning,  
but as the utterly lost—  
because addicted—do:  
resigned all over again. It

only looked, it—  
It must only look  
like leaving. There's an art  
to everything. Even  
turning away. How

eventually even hunger  
can become a space  
to live in.

 

Alone, now, she starves herself of that spirituality. Alone (and yes it's true, she has been alone for longer than she has been alone) she starves herself of presence, and of reality.

She makes a living.

Susan is thrift. She is efficiency. She is not frivolously concerned with makeup or fantasies, but wears her lipstick neatly and earns the respectful gaze of others, can work her way through society and hold a job, knows to be everything seen and needs nothing unseen. She can be at home at the end of the day, alone in her flat, open her mouth and hear the hollowness echo.

What she has to hold on to is morality, not spirituality. She holds it in her head without needing reference. A book, what good is it. All her thoughts are over and done with; all she is left with are conclusions, empty conclusions, held there in her mind. She resists turning them over, examining them, for fear of finding the cracks there. It is so easy. So easy to resist and do nothing, while working her fingers to the bone.

It's not that she isn't hungry. God. How she hungers. But it feeds her. Every moment of hunger is a reminder that she is alive; she has need and so she lives. She is a vacuum and so she exists.

Yet it pulls her from everything, too. She exists in missing so she can never not miss, she can never have or be present. She will always be displaced, no matter how placed she insists she is. Her drink is hard water. Her food is sand.

It's been so long, she doesn't remember what that food tasted like. It was richer, probably. When she dreams of it her subconscious represses any memory in the split second of waking.

If you were to ask her what she dreamed, she would say nothing and she would mean it.

She would powder her nose and apply blush to her pale sunken cheeks and turn away from you lying there in bed, not really away from you but only toward the next step, toward and out of the door. Toward the end of the day.


End file.
